The new issue of the International Socialismjournal is out now, featuring Judith Orr on Sheila Rowbotham, Shlomo Sand interviewed by John Rose and Sebastian Budgen on the loss of a great intellectual – Daniel Bensaid and Chris Harman.

Judith Orr writes:

Sheila Rowbotham gives a fascinating account and new insight into some of the debates, organisations and publications that flourished in Britain and the US during this period in her new book, Dreamers of a New Day.

The full article, “Marxism and feminism today”, is available here. Sheila Rowbotham’s new book Dreamers of a New Day is available now in hardback.

Shlomo Sand speaks to John Rose:

But you know the atmosphere around the established Jewish community in France is frightful. People are afraid. In France at first journalists were afraid to write about the book. However, after the war on Gaza a lot of walls fell down and people began to write more and more about the book. And now there is a pocketbook version and again it is in the bestsellers list. In 2009 the full-size version was the bestselling book about history. But don’t underestimate just how reactionary, racist and authoritarian the current mood of the pro-Zionist circles in the French Jewish community is. They remind me of the pro-Stalinist influence in Paris at the beginning of the 1950s or even the McCarthyist influence in the US at the same time.

Sebastian Budgen pays tribute to Verso authors Daniel Bensaïd and Chris Harman, who both sadly died this year:

For Chris Harman and Daniel Bensaïd, two men who have died at almost the same age and within months of each other—one after a monumental 20-year struggle against illness, the other plucked without warning from the night—scarcely addressed probably more than a few sentences directly to each other in over 40 years. And yet their lifelong, daily, uncomplaining commitment to combine the patient, often wearisome, work of building a small revolutionary group with that of trying to theoretically regenerate the grandeur of the classical Marxist tradition by fertilising it constantly with elements of the new was nonetheless a common endeavour.

The idea of the Jews as a single people or race is a myth, a fi ction based on Old Testament “mythistory”, argues Shlomo Sand, a Jewish historian based at the University of Tel Aviv. It is also one of the founding assumptions of the state of Israel, and throughout this polemical, revisionist history Sand has Zionist ideology in his sights. (He is not anti-Israel, but he is “post-Zionist”.) In essence, his book undermines the moral right of the state of Israel to define itself as exclusively Jewish and how you respond to it will very much depend on your political views. Sand admits none of his findings is new and there are no revelations, but what he offers is a radical dismantling of a national myth. He can find no evidence of any Jewish exile, and without exile there can be no right to return. However, even if it is founded on a myth, the state of Israel exists. Sand wants it to abandon ethnic nationalism and to modernise and democratise, and as this controversial book was a bestseller in Israel, perhaps there is hope that some Israelis want this too.

For more information about The Invention of the Jewish People, visit the book’s website here.

The New York Times, Newsweek, and UPI, reporting on these studies, have placed them in counterpoint to Sand’s argument. In his new afterword for the paperback edition of The Invention of the Jewish People, Sand writes:

After exhausting all the historical arguments, several critics have seized on genetics. The same people who maintain that the Zionists never referred to a race conclude their argument by evoking a common Jewish gene. Their thinking can be summed up as follows: “We are not a pure race, but we are a race just the same.” In the 1950s there was research in Israel on characteristic Jewish fingerprints, and from the 1970s, biologists in their laboratories (sometimes also in the USA) have sought a genetic marker common to all Jews. I reviewed in my book their lack of data, the frequent slipperiness of their conclusions, and their ethno-nationalist ardor, which is unsupported by any serious scientific findings. This attempt to justify Zionism through genetics is reminiscent of the procedures of late nineteenth-century anthropologists who very scientifically set out to discover the specific characteristics of Europeans.

As of today, no study based on anonymous DNA samples has succeeded in identifying a genetic marker specific to Jews, and it is not likely that any study ever will. It is a bitter irony to see the descendants of Holocaust survivors set out to find a biological Jewish identity: Hitler would certainly have been very pleased! And it is all the more repulsive that this kind of research should be conducted in a state that has waged for years a declared policy of “Judaization of the country” in which even today a Jew is not allowed to marry a non-Jew.

“There are more terrible atrocities in the world than what is being done to the caged prisoners of Gaza, but it is not easy to think of a more cruel and cowardly exhibition of human savagery, fully supported by the US, with Europe trailing politely behind. Gideon Levy’s passionate and revealing account is an eloquent, even desperate, call to bring this shocking tragedy to an end, as can easily be done.” Noam Chomsky

“Invaluable – and rather inspiring – insider’s book about the West-Eastern Divan project. … many more projects should match their courage and vision. Meanwhile, Said and Barenboim’s great creation let us hear the precious sound of hope.” Boyd Tonkin, Independent

“Widely acknowledged as the national poet of Palestine.” Robyn Creswell, Harper’s
“Darwish’s poetry is an epic effort to transform the lyrics of loss into the indefinitely postponed drama of return.” Edward Said

“Baruch Kimmerling is a brilliant and subtle thinker, who has made enormous contributions to the understanding of Palestinian nationalism and the understanding of Israeli politics and society.” Roane Carey, editor of The New Intifada and The Other Israel

Voice of Hezbollah brings to an English-speaking readership for the first time Nasrallah’s speeches and interviews: the intricate, deeply populist arguments and promises that he has made from the mid-1980s to the present day.

A group of experts, many of them directly involved in the conflict, trace the course of the uprising, its consequences for the Palestinian people and the Israeli state, and its likely impact on the future of peace in the Middle East.

“When I had finished this book I wanted to cheer … If Jewish adolescents got Marqusee’s book as a bar mitzvah present, there might be a chance of avoiding the repetition of history’s mistakes.” — Michael Kustow, Independent

With well supported historical references, Sand indicates that Jewish communities existed outside Israel, not because of an exile/diaspora, but because of proselytizing and conversion…

This is a highly thought provoking and perhaps, for many, an antagonistic examination of the “nation” of Israel…

The Invention of the Jewish People is very well written and argued, taking a lot of mind work to assimilate the ideas and their implications. … Within Israel, the book remained on the best-sellers’ list for nineteen weeks, and in spite of what Sand has written, it ironically became part of the claim that Israel is democratic, as it allows such challenging works to be written, read, and discussed. Regardless, ideas once expressed become part of the national discourse, and this book may open up a new line of revisionist historians able to examine the reality of their past.

John Campbell reviews Sand’s book for Reform, the magazine of the United Reformed Church:

In The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand, an Israeli historian at Tel Aviv University, investigates the way that the potent biblical stories about Ancient Israel and the long history of the Jewish people have been re-worked into a crucial back story for modern-day Israel. Unsurprisingly, he has stirred up a mighty storm. Yet the book is gentle, thoughtful and very readable…

this book is important for anyone who cares about the Middle East or who engages in any form of Bible story-shaping themselves. Read it and see.

Once weekly, our renowned hosts Ken Livingstone and Derek Conway tackle the books with the big questions – in this compelling 30 minute book review show. We want to delve into the realities behind a recently published political book. With the insights of a distinguished panel of expert guests and a short video to highlight the topic at hand. Together they read between the lines and decide the merits of the book of the week.

The episodes can be available on the Epilogue website, here. Both reviews can be watched on YouTube, here for Invention of the Jewish People and here for Robert Vitalis.

A controversial book which argues that the idea of a Jewish people descended from the ancient Israelites is a Zionist myth, has been shortlisted for British Jewry’s main literary award…

…Alan Mendoza, director of the Israel-Diaspora Trust, said: “The cultural, historical and religious roots of the Jewish people are self-evident and Sands’ desire for self-immolation is not shared by Anglo-Jewry. Was this decision motivated by intellectual navel-gazing of the most banal kind, or does it reflect an attempt to appease those viscerally anti-Israel elements within the broader liberal intelligentsia? Either way, this is a pathetic attempt at gesture politics, and one that cheapens the Wingate Prize.”

The Invention of the Jewish People by Tel Aviv University Professor Shlomo Sand is one of four books up for the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize.